Hve you checked with your DBA. Meaning have you analyzed the tables, analyzed the query, gotten an explain plan. Checked indexes already?
That is one way of speeding up your query, if you are forced to stick witht he thin driver.
Other things that can speed up queries, but not neccessariy for your case. Do you have a connection pool with connection already to handle your query. Creating the connection is always added time.
Hope that helps some.
Mark